Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Explanation of the Observed Irregularities in the Motion of Uranus, on the Hypothesis of Disturbances Caused by a More Distant Planet: With a Determination of the Mass, Orbit, and Position of the Disturbing Body
I. The irregularities in the motions of Uranus have for a long time engaged the attention of Astronomers. When the path of the planet became approximately known, it was found that, previously to its discovery by Sir W. Herschel in 1781, it had several times been observed as a fixed star by Flamsteed, Bradley, Mayer, and Lemonnier. Although these observations are doubtless very far inferior in accuracy to the modern ones, they must be considered valuable, in consequence of the great extension which they give to the observed are of the planet's orbit. Bouvard, how ever, to whom we owe the Tables of Uranus at present in use, found that it was impossible to satisfy these observations, without attributing much larger errors to the modern observations than they admit of, and consequently founded his Tables exclu sively on the latter. But in a very few years sensible errors began again to show themselves, and though the Tables were formed so recently as 1821, their error at the present time exceeds two minutes of space, and is still rapidly increasing. There appeared, therefore, no longer any suficient reason for rejecting the ancient observa tions, especially since, with the exception of Flamsteed's first observation, which is more than twenty years anterior to any of the others, they are mutually confirmatory of each other.
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